January 2015

1st January 2015

On a personal level, I think what I’ll remember most about 2014 is the travelling I did. The start of the year set the tone, as I headed down to that London to say goodbye to 2014 in the company of Ian Jones. We checked out some interesting theatrical stuff and I also saw one of the most precious artefacts known to man:-

I suspect a gay man is curator at the Museum of London, but I can’t be certain of that.

Ian was also around in March when I headed out to Amsterdam. We eschewed the budget airlines in favour of the rail-based option, travelling to the Dutch capital via Eurostar and Thalys. That was a fun trip, but I feel that what happens in Amsterdam should stay in Amsterdam (actually, we checked out some museums, rode the Metro a bit and we looked but didn’t touch in the Red Light District).

2nd January 2015

I’ve tried to keep a diary for several years, to record hopes, dreams, idle fantasies about chaps I fancy, that sort of thing. Usually my efforts have been inconsistent. I forget to fill in one day and before I know it I’ve slipped out of the habit and there are months of blank pages.

I might do better this year, because this diary is AMAZING. It’s chock full of useful info! Too good not to share, in fact.

According to this diary, France still uses the Franc, Greece still uses the Drachma and Germany is clinging on to the Deutsche Mark. And Deutsche Mark is spelled incorrectly.

It thinks Berlin is still split into West and East, giving separate dialling codes for them (even though the codes are identical).

Best of all, though, is the First Aid advice. Here’s what to do if someone is choking:

“A small child can be held upside down and thumped. If this does not work tickle the back of the throat with the finger-tips in an attemt to make patiens cough or vomit.”

Hm… hold a child upside down, thump him and then stick your fingers into his throat. Seems like a guaranteed way to get yourself arrested.

Erm… yes? Cameron wants services such as iMessage and WhatsApp to give up their messages to the security services, but there’s a bigger picture here. Encryption, and the privacy it provides, underpins commerce on the internet. Put your credit card details into Amazon, or do some online banking, and your personal details are encrypted using an algorithm which is very difficult to break. Even social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter default to HTTPS connections these days.

18th January 2015

There’s a lot of cynical comment over their decision to film this moment and put it on YouTube. I, for one, am glad they did, as it highlights the immense difficulty that gay in coming out to their loved ones. I doubt there’s a gay person alive who doesn’t remember a moment like this. The tears. The anxiety. The sentence started but not finished: “I am…”

It shouldn’t be that hard. If we want to make life easier for LGBT youth, let’s start here. Educate parents. Educate teens. Stop making gay kids feel like they have some strange “otherness” to them that people won’t accept.